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<title>Golly Help: Help Menu</title>
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<p>
The Help menu items can be used to display information on a variety of topics.
Each item corresponds to a HTML file in the Help folder.
The information is displayed in a separate help window
which behaves like a simplified browser.
The size and location of this window is remembered when it closes.

<p>
<font size=+1><b>Keyboard shortcuts</b></font>

<p>
Various keyboard shortcuts can be used when the help window is in front:

<p>
<ul>
<li> Hit "+" and "-" to change the font size.
<li> Hit the left arrow or "[" to go back.
<li> Hit the right arrow or "]" to go forwards.
<li> Hit the home key to go to the Contents page.
<li> Hit the up/down arrow keys or page up/down keys if a scroll bar appears.
<li> Hit Ctrl-A on Windows/Linux or Cmd-A on Mac to select all text.
<li> Hit Ctrl-C on Windows/Linux or Cmd-C on Mac to copy selected text
     to the clipboard.
<li> Hit escape or return to close the help window.
</ul>

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<p>
<font size=+1><b>Special links</b></font>

<p>
The help window supports a number of Golly-specific links:

<p>
<ul>

<li> <b>edit:</b><i>file</i><br>
Open the given file in your <a href="prefs:file">preferred text editor</a>.
A non-absolute path is relative to the location of the Golly application.

<li> <b>get:</b><i>url</i><br>
Download the specified file and process it according to its type:
<ul>
<li>
A HTML file (.htm or .html) is displayed in the help window.
Note that this HTML file can contain <b>get</b> links with partial URLs.
For a good example of their use, see the
<a href="get:http://www.conwaylife.com/golly.html">LifeWiki Pattern Archive</a>.
<li>
A text file (.txt or .doc or a name containing "readme") is opened in
your text editor.
<li>
A zip file is opened and processed as described in the
<a href="formats.html#zip">File Formats</a> help.
<li>
A rule-related file (.colors or .icons or .table or .tree) is
installed into <a href="prefs:control">your rules folder</a>
and Golly then switches to the corresponding rule.
<li>
A script file (.pl or .py) is run, but only if you answer "Yes" to the
query dialog that appears.
<li>
A pattern file is loaded into the current layer.
</ul>

<li> <b>lexpatt:</b><i>pattern</i><br>
Load the given <a href="Lexicon/lex.htm">Life Lexicon</a> pattern into a "lexicon"
layer which is automatically created if it doesn't already exist.

<li> <b>open:</b><i>file</i><br>
Load the given pattern or run the given script.
A non-absolute path is relative to the location of the Golly application.

<li> <b>prefs:</b><i>pane</i><br>
Open the Preferences dialog at the given pane.  The pane string must
be lowercase and must match a known pane: file, edit, control, etc.

<li> <b>rule:</b><i>rulename</i><br>
Load the given rule.

<li> <b>unzip:</b><i>zip:file</i><br>
Extract a file from the given zip file and process it in the
same manner as a <b>get</b> link (see above).
Golly creates <b>unzip</b> links when it opens a zip file, so you probably
won't ever need to use such links in your own HTML files.

</ul>

<p>
Note that for some links (<b>get</b>, <b>open</b>, <b>unzip</b>) you can tell
Golly to open the specified file in your text editor by control-clicking or
right-clicking on the link.

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